


it's aiba's birthday!

by forochel



Category: Arashi (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:06:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which there is much frustration and a monster cake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's aiba's birthday!

 

Christmas is a purely commercial affair in Japan. 98.7% of the population subscribe to Shinto or Buddhism, but 100% of the population are worshippers at the capitalist shrine, and there are few displays more profligate than Christmas in Japan, when egoistic hedonism rears its Santa-hatted head in full glory, putting on a pedestal the commodity fetishism of the Japanese people.

Employees - the more visible employees - of Johnny's Entertainment, Sho continues writing furiously, are just another commodity, and a commodity that is in _very high demand_ in the Christmas. In a theoretically incorrect inversion of Say's Law, every demand must generate its own supply. This shit rolls down on mere grunts like Sho and his compatriots in terms of overtime and no rest until the end of the Yuletide season.

Christmas in Japan is not a bloody holiday.

Sho leans back against the old leather sofa in Arashi's dressing room, and winces as a bit of peeling leather sticks into his back. He twists around, plucks it out, throws it over his shoulder, and goes back to looking at his post with a sense of vindication. Sighing, he reaches out and taps the enter button with no small amount of venom, and immediately feels _much better_ about the state of things when his new entry shows up in his (locked) j-web.

There are forty-five minutes till the next rehearsal, a precious space of time in the fevered rush of Arashi's December schedule. Sho fully intends to spend it catching up on some precious sleep. He has just laid his head back against the sofa when his computer _ping_ s in the silence of the dressing room. The other four are off doing solo work or something; Sho cannot be bothered to keep up with _their_ schedules on top of his.

His entry has received a new comment:

  


[14:36] **yokoyu** : dude if you're bitchy about aiba's birthday just say so. :|  
  
---  
  
Sho glares at Yoko's impertinence, before letting his head thud back against the headrest again with another loud sigh. Right, so maybe he's disgruntled because there is no time to celebrate Aiba's birthday, which just so happens to be on Christmas Eve. Aiba had rolled out of Sho's bed at 4am that morning and cooked miso soup and made pickled plum onigiri for their breakfast before crawling back into bed and waking Sho up with a slow, warm kiss that had Sho rolling Aiba underneath himself before Aiba had laughed and pushed him away, chirping far too cheerily for ass o'clock in the morning that "we have work, Sho!"

Blue-balls, Sho was not a fan of. Not getting to celebrate Aiba's birthday in proper fashion, he also was not a fan of. Aiba being falsely cheerful and looking slightly brittle the whole day, Sho would overthrow empires to get rid of. Unfortunately the axis of evil that was their manager, JE's management, and the money-making opportunities of fangirl demands was slightly too evil and powerful for Sho to overthrow.

  


[14:48] **skr** : go buy a cupcake if you're feeling helpful.  
[14:52] **yokoyu** : ...i'm in osaka.  
[14:55] **skr** : don't you have minions?  
[15:10] **yokoyu** : don't _you_?  
[15:13] **skr** : i'm not running the osaka div of our beloved employer  
[15:20] **yokoyu** : man you're grumpy. shit some kid almost killed himself -  
  
---  
  
Sho checks the clock on his laptop screen: 20 minutes left till they met in the 5th floor dance studio for rehearsal. He locks and shuts it decisively, before running out of the room and nearly mowing down a couple of juniors and innocent (hah, innocent, Sho thinks darkly to himself) workers in his rush.

When Sho arrives, panting over the counter of Aiba's favourite pâtisserie, he has precisely 13 minutes to place his order and run back. The lady behind the counter raises an elegantly arched eyebrow at him, and Sho is suddenly extremely aware of his shabby Keio jumper and mismatching scarlet trackpants.

"Um," he said, and tries smiling disarmingly at her, "Aiba Masaki. He comes here often?"

There is a subtle change in the lady's expression, less disdain and more sort of "say the wrong thing and I will _kick your ass_ ". She narrows her eyes at him and says, "He might."

"Right, right," Sho says absently, patting down his pants in search of his wallet, "I need you to deliver a cake big enough for 5 people to the JE premises in about three hours - whatever his favourite is. Thank you," he adds hurriedly, remembering his manners just as he finds the elusive wallet and pulls it out, "It's his birthday."

The expression on her face thaws out considerably and she even deigns to smile at him; it makes her look much prettier.

"It will be 60 000 yen, sir," she says, still smiling, "Will you be collecting it?"

Sho winces as he hands his credit card over, and considers the schedule versus the possibility of the cake making its way to the fifth floor unmolested.

"Yes," he says determinedly, "Bring it to the lobby and ask for Sakurai." He takes a certain morbid pleasure in seeing the lady's eyes widen in surprise, and is almost intrigued by the blush rising to her cheeks before his cellphone starts shouting "DUDE! DUDE! DUDE! DUDE!" and would probably go on ad infinitum if he didn't pick it up.

"What is it?" Sho growls into it, without bothering to check the screen.

"You're not in the dressing room! There are _five minutes_ left till rehearsal, where are you? Are you out?" Aiba babbles in his ear, and Sho feels slightly contrite for making Aiba sound so worried, "Matsujun is going to kill you!" Aiba continues, "And you will die! And I will be miserable! _Sho_!!"

Aiba sounds kind of hysterical, the lady is holding out his credit card with her eyebrow up again, and Sho's life kind of sucks. He grabs the credit card and sprints back with Aiba shouting at him in one ear.

When he bangs his way into the dance studio they're in the middle of warm-ups, and Matsujun's glare makes him feel as though someone's got an infrared laser aiming device from a rifle trained right in between his eyes.

Sho works extra hard in the rehearsal and almost sprains his hip with all the enthusiastic swivelling he's doing - "Ow, ow, _ow_!" he swears, and bends over with one hand pressed to his side. It doesn't hurt quite so much when Aiba doubles up with laughter, even though Nino calls him an old motherfucker.

"I should hope not," Aiba says, suppressing his laughter for a minute, "Adultery is bad enough without it being incestuous."

This makes even Matsujun start howling with laughter, and Sho gives it up and rolls around on the floor in a mix of agony and laughter.

They eventually get back to rehearsing, and Sho puts in an extra hobble or two just for general amusement, changes up a verse to say "I will never lie, I will never die/My hip may get thrown out but I'll never make you cry".

Near the end of rehearsal when they're practising popping and locking a junior sidles shyly in through the door and it takes about five minutes for them to notice that he's cowering there.

"Uh-um," the boy stutters, and all of them uncharitably wonder how he ever got through the auditions, except for Matsujun who famously never had to go for one, "Sakurai-san? Lobby?"

"RIGHT," Sho says loudly before any of them can grill him for details, "I'LL BE GOING THEN."

He grabs the boy by the scruff of his neck and drags him out of the door, down the hallway, and into the lift before letting him go on the second floor with the advice to "circle round the general area and then take the fire emergency stairs back up to the seventh floor". Sho doesn't think that will actually help the boy evade Nino, but it might delay the inevitable long enough for him to grab the cake - which turns out to be this utter _monstrosity_ that requires a box about 50 centimetres high - and skid back into the room in time to hear the tail end of Nino's report.

Aiba is looking at him in awe and then at the cake in his arms, and then his face just _lights up_ the entire room and his eyes crinkled almost shut with how wide his smile is and Sho remembers all over again just why he fell in love with this idiot who is crying at the sight of a monstrous cake. Sho stumbles over to the trestle table nestled in the corner of the studio and very carefully puts it down, which is when the armful of cardboard is replaced by a flying armful of crying, laughing, babbling Aiba. He goes crashing over onto the floor and then the rest of Arashi happily pile on to asphyxiate Sho.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AIBA-CHAN~~~~" They shout as Aiba continues crying and Sho wheezes, and even though he's slowly dying from the weight and lack of air Sho feels a warm glow of satisfaction at unfucking at least _this_ very important bit of his world.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **a/n:** This morning [](http://users.livejournal.com/__sine/profile)[**__sine**](http://users.livejournal.com/__sine/) texted me to say "IT'S AIBA'S BIRTHDAY!!!" As I was busy packing at the time, I did not reply. Later in the day, she told me "IT'S AIBA'S BIRTHDAY!!!" on GChat, to which I said, Hmm. *ponders* And thus, rather like the humongous monstrosity that Aiba's favourite cake is, this fic went from something meant to be a drabble to over 1000 words long. I'm not even a fan of Arashi. How is this my life. :|


End file.
